nation building

Eugene Robinson says Obama's strategy is incoherent

(Newser) -
"Show of hands: Does anybody really understand the US policy in Afghanistan?" asks Eugene Robinson in his Washington Post column today. Because he sure doesn't, even after hearing Obama's speech from the war zone earlier this week. His big question: Why are we still there? We've...
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Democrat-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee urges policy retool

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Our $18.8 billion nation-building efforts in Afghanistan have had only limited success, while vastly distorting the Afghan economy, a new report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concludes. A whopping 97% of Afghanistan’s GDP comes from foreign military and development spending, meaning the country “could suffer a...
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Forces were undermanned, and planning was shoddy

(Newser) -
The US missed out on chances to stabilize Afghanistan early in the war because it devoted too few troops and too little planning to the conflict, write Army historians in an official chronicle of the conflict. "It should have become clear” in late 2003 “that the coalition presence...
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